August 06, 2010

Bordered Diamonds

When I saw the Bordered Diamonds quilt in Kaffe Fassett's book, Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts, I knew immediately that it would be a perfect quilt for a thank you gift for my aunt. Never mind that my stash did not contain many large floral prints. My first thought was that I would just buy a kit, and Glorious Color has fabric kits to make two different versions of the quilt. This is their version from the book. And this is their version from the June/July 2010 Quilt Magazine.

I carefully analyzed each kit trying to decide which would be best. Then I started thinking about how I liked each version--except for this or that fabric, and how I wanted to use some of my own fabrics, and how I am pretty persnickety about fabric choices, and I finally just gave up and started collecting florals...surely that wouldn't add too much to my stash?

Here's a view of the cut diamonds and border strips and of my lovely white board which has been replaced:

And since the directions call for dark diamonds to have light strips, and light diamonds to have dark strips, and the rows to alternate, I photographed them, then changed them to black and white to determine the values, as shown here by the strips (although these are the mediums to darks primarily):

But after trying to lay them out as directed, I decided to do my own thing when the light/dark thing didn't work, and just evenly separated the colors. And now, a couple of months later, the blocks of the quilt are all sewn together. Hooray!

I needed the quilt to be larger than designed, so it's now waiting for the border fabric to be added. This is what I am planning on using:

And, having easily spent twice as much as I would have on a kit (what's an extra 1/2 yard here or there?), I now have a very large bin of floral fabrics. My stash, like my waistline, only seems to grow in one direction....

Thanks for stopping by Janet! Congratulations on being my first visitor! (I think I have the mail thing fixed--hopefully--I've had several email issues, so my confidence on all things technical is a bit weak lately).

Well done with the blog - I've just discovered you and will certainly be following you from now on. I also bought that wonderful Kaffe Fassett book and now you've inspired me to make something from it - although I really don't need to start another project just yet, do I ????Looking forward to following your progress.